Saturday, May 26, 2012

UPDATE 1-Revealing brain damage from battlefield to playing field | Reuters: An injured brain is so littered with the chewed-up remains of neurons and other cells that "it looks like autophagy - the brain eating itself alive," said Lee Goldstein, an Alzheimer's researcher at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Finally, we're finding out what has happened in "shell shock." I remember a guy in our little town, who everyone called "Shorty." He walked everywhere, which was becoming 'odd' by the mid-1960s. Living in an abandoned house out in the woods, he would show up around town and everyone seemed to know him - and that he was "shell-shocked." He obviously had behavior problems, and it seemed he perceived things differently.
I also dealt with major head traumas, from which it was actually astounding that I survived. So I can completely understand the what happens mentally. Also I sympathize with

Friday, March 2, 2012

Thursday, February 2, 2012

One side of the moon is permanently turned away from the Earth due to tidal forces creating what is known as “tidal-lock." To better understand our celestial companion, we launched dual space sensor satellites on a reconaissance mission, GRAIL:

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Friday, January 27, 2012

Environmental regulation generally creates jobs, including lots of blue-collar jobs in construction and manufacturing. Also permanent, professional work is made for scientists, as consultants. This is easily demonstrable; in fact environmental industries are now suffering from a lack of enforcement, on the State level, often locally too.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Lisa Song, InsideClimate News -How do you feel about the pipeline bills that were passed during the special session?

Ken Haar, Nebraska State Senator - I expressed this to the Omaha World-Herald when they were doing a wrap-up: I said "this has really been a f***ing miracle," and they said "well, we can't print that, but we'll use the word 'Christmas.'"

Friday, January 20, 2012

Our impact on Earth has grown enormously. So much so that humans are now a geologic agent. We move as much material every year as all the rivers, including their tributaries. For the last 25 years, we've done that. And the pace is increasing.

We must make substantial changes in how we "use" the planet, else become extinct.﻿

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Ever since I found this old drawing (on ...il.gov or somesuch), I've been enchanted. Apparently in pencil, this artistry also haunts my imagination. They celebrate Morel (mushroom) Days here, every spring. Yes, the town is still there but I'm not sure how much it's grown since the days portrayed.

I drove into town out of curiosity at the end of Morel Days, a few years back. Evidently, the house pictured on the left remains from these times! If so, this view is toward the west in north-central Illinois. And yes, the land is still very flat-lying, being a glacial melt outwash plain.

The fledgling U.S.A. had begun it's wartime campaigns for independence while American explorations continued. In 1778, Thomas Hutchins was exploring the Illinois lands.

He was amazed at the extraordinary bounty of natural growth, animals and forests of oak, walnut, etc. with huge trees. Even the Illinois ground was "a superior soil to any other part of North America that I have seen."

Those of us who had the pleasure of gardening in Illinois know that this natural resource has been conserved. While erosion due to primitive farming practices took a deep toll, there remain a few places where the original soil profile exists. Personally, during geological investigations, I measured the thickness of black loamy topsoil at 13 feet deep. This is extraordinary. Most places on Earth have just a few inches of topsoil. Rarely does it have so much organic humus to be naturally black and have such depth!

Friday, January 13, 2012

Recent capitalistic failures beg for solutions.

There is an implicit falsehood of using money as either a metric or means by which to advance. Perhaps only as a tool to check on usefulness, it may have a role. Otherwise, generalizing Darwinism to monetary systems is highly problematic, i.e.: